Coming Back
by Generation Extant
Summary: The Doctor keeps a promise he made centuries ago, and Russell finds a way home... of sorts. (This story was originally published from July 22-September 2, 2009 at Generation Extant dot com.)


"You're full of it."  
Russell Garamond was playing a game of chess in a rather cozily decorated room. It was Colleen's room inside the TARDIS, bedecked in dark wood and very Victorian bric-a-brac, making sure the young Irish farmgirl of Black 47 would feel right at home. Russell spent most of his time there these days, in the seemingly endless passages of time that separated one of the ship's voyages from another. He had come to care for Colleen a great deal, he would even say that he loved her, but the idea of love and romance was particularly difficult with a woman who was born over a hundred years before him, to say nothing of her half conversion into a machine being at the hands of the Cybermen. True, her mind was that of a computer, and that mind would overwhelm her gentle human sensibilities and she would wake him with her crying at night. When he held her, and she would stop crying, there was no doubt in his mind that she was still a soft and wonderful human being.  
"I assure you, Mr. Garamond," a voice echoed through the room from a tinny speaker, "I am full of nothing but Betelgeusian Victory Salad."  
But the Doctor… no such luck.  
It had become tradition for Russell to play the Doctor whilst he puttered about the TARDIS. The Doctor would enter the room, make a move, and zip off to another task within the labrynthine structure of the vessel, all the while continuing to chat via intercom. After playing three games, and losing in precisely twelve moves total, it was decided that keeping the Doctor a little distracted might give Russell a sporting chance. At times he and Colleen would hear tinkering noises echoing out from the ship, sometimes they would hear what sounded like otherworldly languages or music, sometimes they heard Beethoven or Stravinsky. Once, a massive explosion shook the entire vessel, prompting the Doctor to sprint into Colleen's room, covered in soot, assuring everyone that it was all right and "only 14% of the structure needed to be reconstituted."  
Russell had known him from the beginning as a strange little man with a stocky figure and a youthful face, and as his travels in the TARDIS had continued the face had gotten more youthful with the dismissal of his beard, and the figure had gotten a little stockier due to the Doctor's cosmopolitan love of intergalactic haute cuisine. Pasties from the Karnal nebula, strange liquors from an inside-out planet, a pie that tasted familiarly of apples, but was instead preserved alien eggs, each dish had a story, and the Doctor loved to extoll them all. Russell himself had put on a little weight, filling out the Dotor's old multi-pocketed vest a little better than he had before. Things had changed: Javis was gone, Colleen was becoming more bold, his own stomach was routinely full…but the Doctor was unwavering in his strangeness.  
"No, really," Russell said, idly poking at a spent pawn, "You're lying. You've got to be."  
"And why do you say that?"  
"Because it's ridiculous!"  
The Doctor popped his head back round the doorjamb, bedecked in a ridiculously tall stovepipe hat.  
"I am never ridiculous," he said with a sly grin, then was gone.  
"You can't tell me," Russell leaned back in his chair, "That the only reason you went to Cassone was to take the piss out of that guy."  
"Take the what?" Colleen asked, looking up from her bed and a copy of Lewis Carrol with a worried jerk of her head.  
"It's just an expression, Colleen," the Doctor's voice rang through the intercom again, "It means I was trying to antagonize the gent."  
"You were," Russell said resolutely.  
"I was."  
"But why?" Russell's voice crashed with frustration, something it had done often these days.  
There was an elongated sigh over the loudspeaker.  
"I'll be there in a moment."  
Colleen gave Russell a worried look, and Russell tried his best to look strong. Whenever the Doctor was unable to speak, it was a cause for alarm. Eventually, he entered the room and sat down at the table, bedecked in a rumpled white shirt with olive pinstripes, sandy-coloured trousers and braces, black sleeve garters, and stiff, starched detachable cuffs that were covered in strange, alien writing. Though he had been working, he had only allowed one button to come undone from his equally starched band collar. On his head he wore the Chocolate brown porkpie hat Javis had given him as a Christmas present only hours before she died on the crystal planet of Kenos. The Doctor stroked a bit of stubble that had invaded his chin and swiftly moved a bishop.  
"Check," he said, distinctly trying to dodge the subject.  
"Doctor…" Russell groaned.  
"Yes?"  
Russell heaved an perturbed grunt. Colleen, smiling, put down her book and played diplomat, something she had done with frightening regularity since the incident on Cassone.  
"Doctor," she said, brushing a curly shock of ginger hair out of her bright eyes, "You came in here to tell us why you bothered that man."  
"He needed to know that he was wrong," the Doctor replied almost immediately, leaning back and gnawing at a long fingernail, "that's all."  
"But he wasn't wrong," Russell moved a rook, "The Walls stood up to that…thing's pounding."  
"Of course they did!" The Doctor scoffed, flirting with an insult as he often did, "They were well made!"  
"But you said he was wrong!"  
"He said," the Doctor spoke slowly, enumerating every word, "that his walls would last forever. Now, we all saw that his walls did not last forever, didn't we? Hmm?"  
Both nodded, Russell more begrudgingly.  
"No one should ever carry the delusion that what they do or say or create will last forever. Everything ends… on this plane of existence, anyway."  
"And what about beyond?" Colleen asked. The Doctor smiled.  
"Not even the Time Lords knew that."  
"So let me get this straight," Russell began, trying not to wince as the Doctor made another punishing maneuver, "You took us into a war zone, put us in danger, and showed us the destruction of an entire planet… just to tell someone he was wrong?"  
"Yes."  
"See? You're full of it," Russell shook his head, "You took us there to save the Cars from that demon."  
"I did not know when the demon would invade, it had slipped my mind."  
"No way," Russell waved his hand in front of his face, "Nobody can be that strange."  
"To say 'nobody' implies that I am human."  
"No it doesn't!"  
"Yes, it does."  
Russell nearly boiled over.  
"So all the Time Lords were as warped in the head as you?"  
"Oh no," the Doctor took out an emery board and polished the offensive nail, "Some were much worse."  
"I'm sure you would say so," Russell sneered.  
"I happen to," the Doctor grinned, putting the emery board back in his pocket. He was still smiling, but his voice sounded depressed when he spoke again.  
"Javis would be proud of you, you know."  
Russell tried to laugh it off.  
"Someone's got to tell you when you're full of it."  
"Indeed," the Doctor mused, noting Russell's next move, "She's the reason we went to Cassone, you know."  
"And Dallas?" Russell said with a skeptical eye, remembering his meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald.  
"Yes."  
"You're going to make me as 'why,' again, aren't you?"  
"Only because I know you want to," the Doctor gave him a wink. He sighed, and went on.  
"After Javis died, I wanted to make sure I still had control… power… it must sound very megalomaniacal to a human," he said the word like he was talking to a housecat, but a beloved housecat nonetheless, "but as a Time Lord, I have a responsibility, and as the last one…I've got to keep…things… in check. Sometimes I know what will happen, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I act out of an instinct, that my mind is part of a larger entity and I am merely doing its bidding to set the course of time right. You've probably seen it when we go somewhere, how I twiddle and tweak, moving a pepper-pot or soup ladle, bumping into someone… it's because I am the sole keeper of the Time Lord's charge. Sometimes knowing what will happen makes you want to act out against it, makes you want to flaunt your abilities and hope that maybe, just maybe, you can break the system…but you never can."  
He sighed and rubbed his chin again.  
"I knew what would happen on Kenos, but I didn't know when, and I didn't know Javis would die. I knew…but I didn't know, because when you put all of this knowledge into one mind, even a Time Lord mind… it's a jumble. I went to Cassone, and I said what I did, because I had to prove to myself that I could still be right, and that I could sort out the jumble from time to time…" he placed his hand softly on the queen piece, his head lowered a bit. There was silence for a moment, but then the Doctor beckoned Russell to continue. Siezing the opportunity, Russell swung out with a knight.  
"Chec-"  
"Checkmate," the Doctor defeated him before he could even finish, moving the queen into an undefeatable position. Russell leaned back in his chair, hands over his face, groaning.  
"You knew that was going to happen, didn't you, you crafty old fart?"  
The Doctor raised his head and smiled.  
"No, I didn't. But I know you."  
Any further conversation was halted by a high-pitched whine that issued from the console room, out the door, down the hall to the right.  
"What is that?" Russell asked, the whine attacking his ears. Of the many sounds of the TARDIS, it was one he'd never heard before. The Doctor, in his usual habit, leapt up from the table and began to scuttle off down the hallway, his companions in hot pursuit.  
"It's a distress call!" the Doctor said over the din, "and an old one! That frequency hasn't been used since, well… since a very long time!"  
He seemed suddenly young again and full of vigor, his short legs hard to keep up with as the gangly Earth doctor loped heavily to keep up.  
"Oooh!" he almost giggled as the entered the console room, "I wonder who it could be?"

The Doctor fiddled madly with the myriad of controls that circled the central time rotor, plotting a course as the distress signal whined on.  
"Good God that's loud!" Russell snarled, clapping both hands over his ears.  
"Ah, yes…" the Doctor mused as he turned a knob, "they just don't make them like that anymore!"  
"I'm glad they don't!" Colleen shouted with a grimace, throwing her own homespun sleeves up over her head in the hopes of drowning out the noise. The Doctor seemed unaffected.  
"Oh yes, it's an old one…only a few know how to activate that one, I could probably count them all on one hand! The only problem is…" he kept muttering to himself, his fingers nervously everywhere at once, "Four of those five fingers are beings that I never want to see again… oh well!"  
He slammed a lever forward, and the ship lurched into a nearby orbit.  
"Here's to a one in five chance!"  
"Doctor!" Russell hollered, "Where are we going?"  
"To Earth, of course!" the Doctor said giddily, even though there was nothing plain or obvious about it, "It's very strange, actually: for such an unremarkable little rock-ball, your planet seems very important to the flow of time…"  
He glanced sidelong at Russell, who still had his hands over his ears, and added an aside.  
"Just don't let it go to your head!"  
"WHAT?" Russell bellowed.  
The Doctor simply put shook his head and put a finger to his lips. He flicked one switch, and the alarm abruptly stopped. Russell and Colleen both removed their arms from round their heads, blinking in disbelief as the Doctor flipped another switch, opening an intercom.  
"Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan, this is the Doctor of the good ship TARDIS responding to an Earth distress call, please respond."  
There was no answer. The Doctor, looking a little displeased, flipped another switch and immediately the control room was filled with several multiple recordings of the Doctor saying the same thing, but in a countless number of languages.  
"Oh great," Russell slapped his hands on his ears again, "I think this is worse!"  
Eventually, all the transmissions ceased, but still there was no reply. Now looking a little worried, the Doctor began to fiddle with the instruments again.  
"What's wrong, Doctor?" Colleen asked, making mental notes to learn those languages later when she had a spare minute or two.  
"I'm not getting a response, which means either something is not right," he gazed into a monitor, "or something is very, very wrong."  
He twisted a knob back and forth, growing ever more bad-tempered until something finally flickered into view. Colleen poked her head round the console to take a look but the Doctor had already leapt back, spinning the dial in the process and obscuring the information.  
"Ah! There we are!"  
Russell leaned over the opposite end of the console and sighed exasperatedly.  
"WHERE we are, Doctor?"  
"It appears that the TARDIS, for all of her wonder and wizardry, still maneuvers like a shopping trolley at times…" the Doctor paused for a moment before patting the console reassuringly, as if he had hurt the machine's feelings.  
"Oh, there there, I didn't mean it. You look much better than I do after all these years, wouldn't you agree? Oh… I didn't mind the beard either…you didn't think it was too much? Oh, go on you…"  
"DOCTOR."  
The strange man jumped as Russell snapped him out of it.  
"Er…sorry. Old friends. Anyway, whether through my fault or that of the ship, I thought I was heading for a year more than a billion years in Earth's future. Now of course, when you're dealing with billions of years made up of trillions and quintillions and octillions of temporal units, it's only natural to mess up a few things, and…"  
Russell was angrily drumming his long and agile surgeon's fingers on the console.  
"Well… I miscalculated. We're about five hundred years later than I had hoped we would be."  
"What of the distress signal, then?" Colleen said, casting a nervous look at Russell, "are they not answering because they're all…dead?"  
"OHH!" the Doctor launched into a boisterous chortle, "Oh, no no no no, my dear, no they are not…in fact some would say that they are more truly alive than ever before. Tell me, what have you learned of Earth's future history in those books I gave you?"  
Colleen flushed a shade of bright scarlet and hung her head.  
"I…I haven't read them yet."  
"Good heavens, girl, why not?"  
"Who likes reading a story when they already know the ending?" Russell offered, walking around the console and putting a comforting hand around the Irish girl's narrow shoulders. She stiffened initially out of propriety, then softened into his half-embrace. The Doctor cocked an eyebrow.  
"Indeed. So, if I may dare ask, what have you been reading?"  
"Well, to be perfectly honest," she stammered.  
"Yes?"  
"I've been reading… I've been reading all of your cookbooks."  
For a moment, there was no sound but the gentle whirr of the TARDIS engine in orbit. Then, as usual, the Doctor exploded into another bout of chunnering.  
"Well, that's certainly something! And I can certainly appreciate another body in this ship who has a mind for haute cuisine! Now Colleen, dear, tell me something in that big, beautiful augmented warp-speed brain of yours, will you?"  
She blushed again and fidgeted.  
"A..alright…"  
"Is there a certain time, since cookbooks were first published, where there were no cookbooks written, bought, read, or even conceived?"  
Her eyes flittered for a moment under freckled lids.  
"Yes."  
"And tell me," he began to pace around the TARDIS in that pompous manner, with both hands clasped behind his back, "Does your brain say anything…about ANY books being published between that same time period?"  
Colleen searched for a little while longer. Finally, her eyes opened wide and she said with surprise,  
"…No!"  
"Exactly!" the Doctor threw out his index finger like it was shot from a bow, building to a climax like a manic court defendant, "And do you know why, Mr. Garamond, why there were no books published in that span of time?!"  
"Everything had been written down already," he replied with a wan smile.  
"No!" the Doctor railed on, unaffected, "You see, that's a wonderful thing about humans is that they're always creating. Sometimes, they even create new ways to even go on living and new ways to look at life! You see, as well as being endlessly creative, human beings are also horribly self-centered. They don't do well with the concept of death. As such, it is around this time, millions of years into your future, Mr. Garamond, and millions and one hundred years into your future, Ms. Ciradh, that humans finally took a step that they believed would bring them toward immortality and towards Heaven on earth: they converted the entire population to information."  
"Converted?!" Colleen's eyes boggled at the recollection of her own personal horror, being herself nearly converted by the Cybermen.  
"Yes, as grisly as it seems," the Doctor said gravely, "There was a worldwide movement to solve various problems: hunger, war, homelessness, even that pesky little bit of mortality, by sacrificing their very humanity and converting themselves to a unique informational signal in a virtual worldwide network."  
"The world is flat," Russell said with a scoff.  
"The world is online," the Doctor countered with a raise of his eyebrows, "By this time in History, Earth had become nearly completely spent and could not sustain her population, even with expansive colonization efforts. In a way, it was the smartest thing to do, a prudent use of both planet and technology and, some would argue… a ticket to immortality. After all, you can't kill information…"  
"But you can delete it," Russell moved his hand from Colleen's shoulder and placed a hand on the console, "This worldwide Facebook would be at the mercy of any hacker or maniac who took a sledgehammer to the servers!"  
"Quite right, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor took off his hat and scratched at his shaggying brown hair, "Naturally, there have been security measures to ensure such a genocide does not happen, and unless I miss my guess… it's that security system that sent the distress signal. The only problem is that he or she or it has not yet responded, which could mean trouble…"  
Russell scoffed with black humour.  
"If it's anything like that warrior's banquet on the Epsilon Vector, I'll need that blaster rifle again,"  
The Doctor's face looked wistful and dreamy at the mention of the experience.  
"Oh, but weren't those cakes worth it? Lovely icing. Were those in any of the cookbooks, Colleen?"  
"I think so," the young Irishwoman blinked with confusion, "but isn't there something to do?"  
"Oh, what's the bother?" the Doctor took on an uncharacteristically callous bluster, "No one's responding, so it's safe to assume they're all dead! So long, Auf Wiedersehen, end of the human race, and good riddance!"  
"Oh come now… is that any way to talk to me?"  
The voice came through the TARDIS speakers as plain as if the person was standing next to them. It was kind, almost matronly, and very definitely the sound of a mature or middle-aged woman.  
"I sent that distress call five hundred years into the past, hoping that the TARDIS would be as unreliable as ever. You old goat, why haven't you ever fixed the thing?"  
The Doctor threw back his head and laughed.  
"Oh, but I like it so much more this way!"  
"I suppose it still looks like that rubbish police box?"  
"76 Totter's Lane, m'gel!"  
"You sentimental old fool," the woman's voice chuckled, "Now come on down here, I actually do have something we need to discuss."  
"I always said I'd come back, didn't I, Susan?"  
"Yes, you did… but you took your dear, sweet time!"  
The Doctor turned a few switches and the TARDIS began its descent.  
"My dear, you know as well as I do that time is relative!"  
"I've got you on my scanners," Susan chose to ignore the last comment, "feel free to land at the coordinates I've sent you."  
"Aye aye," the Doctor said with gusto, "TARDIS over and out!"  
The Doctor switched off the communicator with a small click, then got to work on the landing procedure.  
"Doctor, if I may," Russell said with mock sweetness, "Just what in the blue Hell is going on here?"  
"The voice on the other end of the line comes from a woman I knew as Susan Foreman," the Doctor said, talking distractedly as he fiddled with the controls, "but that was millions of years ago, I wonder what she calls herself now…"  
"Millions of years?" Colleen retrieved a crocheted shawl from the TARDIS' hall tree, "Does that mean she's another alien?"  
"I should think so," the Doctor punched one last button, swept his hair back, and plopped the porkpie on his head.  
"She's my granddaughter."

"Your granddaughter?"  
"That's what I said, wasn't it?" the Doctor negotiated a gentle touchdown for the TARDIS.  
"That's just not possible," Russell said, his mouth agape, "You're not… I mean, you don't…you haven't… I've seen you look with more love on a sandwich than a woman!"  
The Doctor straightened his lapels.  
"In my experience, Mr. Garamond, love and romance is a finite thing. It grows old, particularly when the one you have chosen is no longer present. Yes, I was married, had children, had grandchildren, had a family, once…but they've all gone away now, for one reason or another. A sandwich, on the other hand," he flipped a switch and the TARDIS doors opened slowly, "is almost infinitely customizable."  
"Just as charming as ever, Grandfather."  
The Doctor's granddaughter, the former Susan Foreman, stood with her hands on her hips, a middle-aged looking woman, stocky but in good health, with streaks of gray flashing through her nearly black hair like errant comets. Her elfin features still remained: the slightly pointed ears, the almond-shaped eyes, the thin and deft-looking lips that seemed to be the only other pair in the universe that could keep up with the Doctor. She was standing in a room that was nearly completely dark and silent, save for the glow of far too many monitors and the hum of far too many capacitors. It was relatively clean, and a comfortable enough living space, with couches and tables and even a vintage refrigerator, but the overbearing presence of constant technology seemed austere. The Doctor walked to her slowly, extending his arms out wide and welcoming her in a warm embrace.  
"My dear," he said with no shortage of bravado, "You look wonderful!"  
"And you look ridiculous!" she said, pushing him away, "What's with this get-up, you old fraud? You don't even look thirty by an Earth's year! What is it, some kind of mid-life crisis? Is this the Time Lord's version of a toupee and a motorbike?"  
"Hardly," the Doctor said, dusting himself off haughtily, "I'm well into my final regenerations, Susan."  
"It's Cynthia, now," she said with a grin, "and I'm only on four. Unlike SOME people, I take care of my lives!"  
"Ah, to be on my fourth life again… the hat, the scarf, I was so dynamic then…" the Doctor prodded his husky frame, "As opposed to this doughboy you see before you. I tell you, I've had a devil of a time trying to get people to take me seriously!"  
"As well you should, with some of the other outfits you've tried," Susan scoffed. The Doctor regarded her curiously, and she sensed what question he was going to ask and answered it preemptively.  
"Oh, yes, Grandfather, I broke your little code into the world's information systems. Took me all of five minutes."  
"The student has become the master," the Doctor smiled, tipping his hat, "you always were a brilliant child, it was almost… unearthly."  
"But you stuck me on Earth, didn't you? 2150, after the Dalek conquest, left me to my one true love…but then he died, and I had to keep on living for another million years!"  
"You didn't have to, Susan-"  
"Cynthia!"  
"Cynthia," the Doctor corrected himself, "You could have died with David, you know."  
"Not after what I'd seen, Grandfather," she shook her head, "not after what you gave me: the universe, the wonder, and most importantly a purpose for myself. I felt like I had to do what you do, that it was in my blood to try to help the world as much as possible…particularly Earth…"  
The Doctor cut her off at that point with a dismissive wave.  
"Runs in the family, I suppose," he turned to Russell and Colleen, overly genial, "Look at us, Sus, er… Cynthia, chunnering like a couple of old hens, and I haven't even introduced my friends!"  
"These are the latest ones, then?" she looked them up and down, "Russell and Colleen? So sorry to hear about Javis, but you'll have better days ahead, I promise!"  
"Of all the things to say," Colleen whispered to Russell, "She's as bad as he is!"  
"Strange thing, time travel," Russell muttered back, then turned to Susan, "So! I get the impression that the good Doctor marooned you here on earth back in the day, I suppose a similar fate will be in store for us?"  
"Oh, no!" the woman flushed a little, "I didn't mean it like that! Grandfather was trying to protect me, was all, from the rest of Gallifrey, from the Time War…"  
"I've heard of the Time War," Russell said, stepping a little closer, "but what did Gallifrey have against you? Wasn't that your home?"  
"She was a… controversial child…" the Doctor stepped in to try to stop the conversation.  
"Oh, come off it, Grand-Dad! I was Gallifrey's most famous bastard, and you know it!"  
"Susan!" the Doctor said with a start.  
"Cynthia!" she shot back with a raspberry.  
"Now this I've got to hear," Russell plopped down on the sofa and crossed his legs eagerly. Cynthia began to speak, but the Doctor silenced her by clearing his throat quite pointedly.  
"Susan," he paused to see if he would be corrected, then continued, "was the last natural birth within the Time Lord citadel. Technically, such a practice was forbidden by the Time Lords since the advent of the Looms. Instead of birthing our young, each house would place the remains of their deceased into the Looms, to be woven into a new being cobbled together from all of the other genetic pieces that had been placed in there before it. Susan, however… well, let's just say that my family, my house… the house of Lungbarrow… had always been a bit of a rabble-rousing lot."  
Colleen tried to put it together.  
"So Susan was "born" born, instead of being, er…"  
"Woven," the Doctor helped her along, sitting in an overstuffed armchair, "And as such she was, shall we say, unpopular with the rest of society."  
"They wanted to kill me, Grandfather," Cynthia once again shed light on the harsh truth from the loveseat, "they wanted to toss me from the top of the citadel as a newborn."  
"Well, yes…" the Doctor continued, slightly flustered, "But I had certain…connections back then, and I was able to enroll her in the Time Lord Academy."  
"That didn't last long."  
"Susan! Let me finish! I may look younger than you, but I'm still your grandfather and you'll treat me with respect!"  
"…Cynthia."  
"I'll call you Cecily Gumblejack if I want!" the Doctor thundered, cutting a rather comical figure in his bracers and porkpie.  
"Oh, don't say that, Grandfather," Susan rubbed her stomach, "I haven't had a Gumblejack in ages! Import prices are terrible on seafood!"  
"I'm sure that's tragic," Russell leaned forward on the couch, "but what happened after the Academy?"  
"She was expelled," came the Doctor's trite and concise answer.  
"That's all?" Russell cocked an eyebrow. The Doctor stared Susan down until he was convinced she wouldn't say anything else.  
"That's all."  
"So Grandfather let me skip town with him in his old, rickety TARDIS. Both of my parents, er…" she caught the Doctor's baleful eye, "They were fine with me going away, as I was likely to still get tossed from the citadel's spire even as what you Earthlings would call a teen-ager."  
"So what happened then?" Colleen asked, taken in by the story.  
"The stuff of legend," the Doctor settled down into the armchair and winked at his granddaughter, "And it was because of her previous experience on Gallifrey, and her knowledge of the Looms, that allowed her to craft this system you see here…am I right, Cynthia?"  
The older woman smiled and nodded.  
"It was a similar set-up: transforming one type of genetic material to another, only this time I was turning flesh and blood into bits and bytes. I've even got a fail-safe ready in case they want to go back someday. There's seven of us, now, one on each of the continents, running what they used to call 'tech support' and keeping the human race, such as it is, alive and online."  
"Watching over humans," Russell noted, "You are like your Grandfather."  
"Well, he has his reasons for liking this little rock," Susan blurted out good-naturedly, "After all, he…"  
"Come now, Susan!" the Doctor barked, still trying to seem congenial, "I'm sure you didn't send out a distress call willy-nilly now, did you? You'll be so kind as to show us to the problem at hand, won't you?"  
His words were clipped and deliberate, and he was definitely trying to hold some of his original authority to keep his granddaughter from saying too much.  
"Yes, right…sorry," she said, embarrassed, "I sent out a general call on all channels, actually…I only sent it on the ancient one because I knew you would recognize it and help, if you weren't busy… There have been threats, you see. Not everyone volunteered for full…"  
She glanced with a worried look at Colleen, who took a shuddering breath and nodded for her to continue.  
"Full conversion, and some people still choose to live in the wilds, fighting back."  
"A Luddite Rebellion," Russell commented.  
"In a way, but I understand why they don't want it. I didn't want it either, which is why I volunteered to stay behind. Every hundred years or so, I cut my hair, change my name, and so on so they think someone new is in charge. I keep this place dark and sad looking so they all keep on believing they're living in paradise but… they've lost their humanity…"  
"And what does that make you, forever watching over them?" Russell asked pointedly.  
"I don't know," Susan replied, the first marks of grief showing on her face.  
"She can't help it, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor stood and put a consoling arm on his granddaughter's shoulder, "It is what we do, it is what our race has grown to be, much like yourself, and much like Ms. Ciradh, we all have our own programming."  
He patted Susan's shoulder thoughtfully, and whispered a few things in her ear. Susan nodded, and the Doctor straightened back up, almost unnervingly chipper.  
"Right, then! Looks like we've got to take a look at the file server, as it were! Mr. Garamond, please follow me, if you would!"  
"What am I going to do? How on earth am I going to be able to help you–"  
"Follow. Me. Please." the Doctor said with a deliberateness that could not have been understated. Russell grimly followed him out of the dark and medicinal control room into a brightly lit apartment that appeared to be in broad daylight. He took one glance out of the window and stopped in his tracks.  
"What on Earth…"  
"Have a look, Mr. Garamond. We've got the time."  
He needed no second bidding, and tore from the Doctor's side to gaze out of the window of the expansive, but rather modest, mansion Susan had been given.  
It was the only building to be seen.  
Around it stood acres and acres of nothing but farmland, everything being grown and harvested automatically by robotic minions as far as the eye could see.  
"Welcome to your future, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor side from behind him, "A planet with only seven buildings, the rest being used to put the world back to rights, and to sell frankly embarrassing amounts of cash crops to intergalactic customers. Compressing an entire planet onto a hard drive costs money, you know, and it turns out that quite a few alien races like things such as corn, soybeans, beef, pork, and even asparagus…"  
He turned around and continued walking.  
"Though I could never abide by the stuff. Follow me, Mr. Garamond."  
"How do you know where to go?"  
"Time Lords have certain… psychic connections. I severed Susan's contacts when I secreted her away from Gallifrey. It kept her out of contact with those who would still want her dead, thinking her to be impure. It was only today I allowed my own psychic channel to reopen to her, and she always was such a brilliant student…I wonder what she may have seen…anyway, I know enough to know that what we need to look at, is right down here."  
He flipped a simple light switch, like one Russell would have had at his old flat in the 21st century, and the two descending a steep, dangerous looking spiral staircase into what could only be called a root cellar. The walls were shabby stone, only painted long ago, and the walls were lined with shelves of home-canned foods, along with a small workshop and a Franklin stove next to a antiquated television and a stack of Betamax cassettes. There, in the corner of the room, behind all of the bric-a-brac of a simple country life, Russell saw two items that looked out of place: a floor-to-ceiling humming black monolith, and a strange, helmet looking contraption that seemed to stick out from it on a hydraulic bar.  
"What's that in the corner?" Russell asked, afraid to get too close to the device that looked perfectly set to fit on his head and remove his brains.  
"That, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor trotted over to the monolith, hands behind his back, scribbled collars crossed one over the other, "Is the entire population of North America."

"I can't believe it!" Russell marveled as he held out a hand, just a hairsbreadth from the humming device, "I just can't believe it!"  
"Of course you can't," the Doctor muttered and brushed by him, "Your lot hasn't even worked out transparent aluminum yet."  
He popped open a control panel on the machine and began to tinker.  
"Didn't you have that fancy screwdriver thing before?" Russell asked, nosing over the Doctor's shoulder.  
"That's terribly annoying, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor muttered, "would you liked it if I were to pester you during surgery?"  
"Ha!" Russell sniggered, "you didn't even stay on the table!"  
The Doctor was engrossed in whatever it was that he was doing, so Russell headed over to the jars of home-canned food and the comparatively ancient television. He sat gingerly in a creaky, dusty old armchair, as if afraid the thing would fall apart.  
"Here's a bit of home comfort," he said, settling in, "No doubt she picked this up from a museum or something."  
He picked over a few of the Betamax tapes, chuckling as he did so and remembering when Betamax was first available. The stack was delightfully eclectic, with the likes of _Star Wars_butting up against the original version of _Annie._ After poring over a couple of the box notes, Russell began to grow a little bored.  
"You forced me down here to ingore me? That's not like you," he said, plopping his long feet on a coffee table.  
"Feet off," the Doctor replied automatically. Russell did as he was told with a roll of his eyes.  
"You just didn't want me to ask more questions of your granddaughter, right? Afraid I'll uncover just a little bit too much about you? I mean, I've already seen Gallifrey, met the Master, seen the Looms at work…you must be running out of precious secrets, and I'm sure your granddaughter was one of the biggest of all. All these secrets… I've stopped asking myself why a long time ago."  
He hadn't hear the Doctor come up behind him, and the voice so near him nearly startled him out of the chair.  
"Don't worry, Mr. Garamond. I have plenty of secrets left. Tell me, do you know what a beta tester is?"  
"Uh, I used to," Russell continued lamely, afraid of another lecture, "Something to do with computers back in my day, wasn't it?"  
"In a way, yes…" the Doctor nodded, "but perhaps you would be more familiar with the term 'guinea pig.'"  
And before he could think about it, the Doctor had slapped the headpiece onto Russell. In a trice, his very being was turned to tiny bits of information and, bit by bit, fed up through the headpieces, through the connecting wires, and into the mainframe. I all happened in a manner of seconds, leaving nothing but an empty chair. All the while, the Doctor had kept on a face of grim concentration and, now that it was over, he strolled leisurely back to the large machine and began to pore over the readouts.  
Meanwhile, Colleen and the former Susan were in the brightly decorated kitchen of the building, canning a few of the fresh vegetables.  
"It's bound to happen," Susan said, scrubbing a carrot, "they may be robots, but they're still programmed by man, so they don't always get everything."  
She handed the carrot to Colleen, who began cutting them slowly and deliberately.  
"I go out there after the harvest times and I pick up what they left behind, but never a lot, never more than I need… Earth still has plenty of rabbits, after all…"  
"It's wonderful to see," Colleen said, still focused on the cutting, "the Earth in such a state. In my time, it seemed as if we would never grow anything again, as if the land itself was wasting away."  
She gently scraped some of the carrots into a pot on the stove.  
"But we were stupid. Primitive. We did not understand, how could we? The complexities of agriculture, the science of organic compounds, fertilizers, hybrid varieties, crop rotation, legumes, nitrogen, GPS, computerized planting analysis, genetically enhanced foodstuffs…"  
As she continued, her voice began to speed up, along with her hands, as she began chopping carrots with blazing speed. What was one a steady _thok, thok_ of a knife on the cutting board was no such a din that it seemed one continuous sound. Susan looked up with equal parts wonderment and horror at what she saw. She placed a gentle hand on Colleen's violently vibrating hand, putting things slightly off-balance and forcing Colleen to cut herself on her left hand. With a surprised squeak she stopped, lurching back to cover one hand with the other. Susan grabbed a towel and compressed the wound.  
"There, that's better," she tried to soothe the now distraught Irish girl. Colleen's eyes were open wide, her face was flushed, and she had the appearance of someone lost. She took her uninjured hand and ran it violently through her hair, trying to expel some of the nervous energy.  
"Colleen, it's all right," Susan assured her, putting her other hand around the girl's narrow shoulder until she stopped trembling.  
"You're sure not an ordinary girl, I'll say that. But…look at me, eh? We're hybrids ourselves, you and me. Us mishmashers have got to stick together!"  
'What do you mean?"  
"Well, I'm the Doctor's granddaughter, aren't I? And we both know he's not exactly all-there…"  
Colleen giggled nervously at this. Susan took it as a sign to continue.  
"You see, Gallifrey has a long history. Long before we ever discovered time travel, we were brutal and savage, just like humans. We had our wars, we had our genocides, all watched over by a priestess named Pythia. Then three scientists rose to defeat her by inventing and harnessing the power of black holes. Omega was the one who developed a means to create them, Rassilon made them our power source, and then there was… the Other."  
"Who's that?" Colleen asked, content now that there was no more bleeding.  
"Some say he's the one who found a way to travel through time. Some say he was a scientist from Earth. Some even say he was from the 19th century, and he found a way to travel to Gallifrey, showing them how to travel in time and space. And some say… he was what my grandfather would become."  
"That's why… he's half-human?" Colleen gasped, remembering a similar proclamation made by another Time Lord.  
"Some say that, yes," Susan nodded, reaching into the cabinet for a bandage, "And he's certainly not like a conventional Time Lord. You see, the legend says that Omega disappeared inside the black hole he created, but some believe that Rassilon lied to Omega, telling him he could survive the mission. Once Omega was gone, Rassilon became an absolute leader, and the Other knew he would be next. Legend says that, in an act of protest, he threw himself, still alive, into one of the Looms of Lungbarrow, guaranteeing that the House would forever be outcast as impure, and a house of troublemakers and misfits… so they say. The Other was my grandfather, my mother was a Time Lord. Their children had gone against the rules of Gallifrey and conceived a child, and that child was me. Before he died, my grandfather tried to send me away from Gallifrey, but I wouldn't let him. I stayed behind and hid while the soldiers of Rassilon found and captured my parents. They were tried as criminals and killed for unlawful procreation. When the Doctor found me, I was living in the shadows. He took me and, with an old TARDIS scheduled to be scrapped, we left Gallifrey."  
She finished tying the bandage and looked up into Colleen's green, tearful eyes.  
"The Doctor is not the Other. He is not _technically_ my grandfather, but… but part of me tells me that he is. I have come to believe it, because there is just…something that tells me so."  
"In my day, Susan, we called that feeling God," Colleen said, her quiet voice suddenly rather stern. Susan saw her sad, yet determined eyes and laughed.  
"Yes, yes I believe you would…and maybe it is. There," she patted Colleen's hand, "Good as new! Now come on, we've still got plenty of canning to do!"  
They set to it again, although this time at a decidedly more lesiurely pace.  
"I worked in the big house, back home," Colleen looked up from the carrots, "And the mother there, she always used to say that you should eat what you can, and–"  
"Can what you don't?" Susan finished it for her with a grin, "My mother always used to say that, too."

Russell Garamond was home.  
It was the house he had grown up in, an old, charming farmhouse in the middle if Illinois, with a whitewashed exterior, farm standard outbuildings, and an apple tree in the backyard. Russell had spent most of his childhood here, some of the best days of his life, before the farm ceased to be profitable and the family moved into the nearby city of Springfield. But still…as he walked about the house, from his old bedroom where he woke up, to the solitary bathroom, to the dining room, it was all as it was, or should have been. The house had an almost exact appearance to the one Russell knew as a child, and only a few different coats of paint or odds and ends showed him that he had obviously lived in this place for some time. As he ran his hand over his diploma, proudly displayed by the old fireplace, he couldn't help but shake the feeling that something didn't feel right.  
But how could it feel wrong? He was home.  
Russell continued to walk around in a daze, eventually making it into the kitchen. The freshly cleaned linoleum made his socks slide as if they were on ice. He wobbled a bit and regained his balance, only to hear a faint giggle coming from the direction of the sink. Like most of the house, the sink was an original piece that Russell's great-grandparents had installed when they moved onto the farm. The person standing over the sink, however, was certainly someone who had never been to this house before.  
"I told you I'd be cleaning today," Colleen turned around, a smile on her freckled face, "You've no one to blame but yourself if you fall on your backside!"  
"Sorry," Russell said, scratching his head in embarrassment. He stood there for a while, watching Colleen scrub up the kitchen, all the time this niggling doubt eating at the back of his mind. What was it? Was it her birthday? Their anniversary?  
Wait…  
They were married?  
Of course they were. Almost ten years ago, don't you remember?  
Mom was so proud.  
Russell nodded to himself as Colleen caught him daydreaming.  
"Sure, nod all you like," she waggled the rag at him, "I'm sure you approve being that you're not doing the work! Now, move yourself, the hogs haven't been fed yet, and unlike you they don't like to sleep in on a Saturday morning!"  
She was right. As he cocked an ear, Russell could hear a fair bit of squealing coming from the direction of the barn. He looked out the window, knowing exactly where the barn would be, and exactly where he would find the feed for the hogs, and what name to call each of them, and which ones would become pork during the next year.  
"What's with you?" Colleen smiled lovingly as she walked up behind him, gazing out the window and placing a light peck on his cheek, "Can't be standing around all morning! After the hogs, we've got to go give the corn a once over, and then you've got to drive little Javis into town."  
For some reason, the entire world seemed to dim a bit around Russell.  
"I'm sorry, did you say…Javis?"  
"Aye, Javis," Colleen rolled her eyes, "Our daughter? Did you sleep upside down or something? Sure it's like your brains ran out your ears!"  
She gave him grief, but the undertone to the entire thing was a deep affection and an even deeper love.  
"She's got baseball practice today, remember? Little League starts, and you wouldn't dare let her play softball. She's got a lot of live up to!"  
"I suppose she does," Russell rubbed his eyes and the proper lighting and color returned. He heaved a heavy sigh and moved over to the front door, slipping on high, rubberized boots and calling out to his wife.  
"I'll be back in a moment, darling," he smiled, "if I don't feed those pigs, they're liable to eat the walls off the barn!"  
"No time for pigs now, Mr. Garamond!"  
The voice was like a thunderbolt to Russel's brain. A siren suddenly began to rip its way through the gentle country life and, little by little, the walls began to shift and warp. Some of them seemed to morph, and others seemed to have simple revolving panels. Even the windows began to shift and buckle and change, but nothing ever seemed to break, only to become pliable and transmutable. Soon, all of the light and airy atmosphere of the farmhouse, even the sky outside and the wailing of the hogs, was shut out, revealing an austere, white room with roundels on the walls. In the blink of an eye, the Doctor  
…yes, the Doctor!  
came running down the stairs, pulling on his brown tweed jacket and adjusting the matching flat cap atop his head. He twirled at the handlebar moustache obsessively with one hand as he stroked a Van Dyke with the other, puttering around the kitchen and babbling to himself. By the time he had fully pulled on the jacket, set the cap, and buttoned his waistcoat, the walls and the previous existence were gone, and Russell was standing in the control room of the TARDIS with the now timid Colleen.  
"Now, where did I put that…oh, yes!"  
The Doctor reached into his wiastcoat and pulled out the sonic screwdriver, pointing it at the last remaining traces of the former reality and putting it back in place. The siren stopped, and the Doctor bounded over to the TARDIS console.  
"Right, there we are! Places to go! People to see! Things to eat! Oh, what I wouldn't give now for some of the clotted cream from a Henro on New Castellius…it comes right out of the creature clotted, the cream! Now, if they only had some kind of bee that produced lemon curd…"  
He switched a few lights on the console, and the ship began to whir to life. Russell looked over at Colleen and she smiled, though not as broadly as she had in the life before. All three braced themselves as the TARDIS shot ahead, the old family farm vanishing as they sped off for parts unknown. Russell closed his eyes tightly and tried to make sense of the situation, but all he could hear was the humming of the ship's engines and the Doctor's laughter reverberating off the walls of the TARDIS and back again.  
Then, everything went white.  
Russell jolted out of the armchair in the basement of Susan's compound, knocking over the stack of Betamax tapes and stubbing his toe in the process. He was drenched with sweat and his heart pounded like a triphammer. He clutched a hand to his chest as he gasped for breath, hearing again, to his dismay, the voice of the Doctor.  
"Yes… that will do nicely."  
Russell staggered to his feet and made his way over to the humming column the Doctor was currently inputing a sequence of numbers and letters into.  
"Thank you, Mr. Garamond. That was most helpful."  
He finished whatever he was typing and clicked one of the panels back into place.  
"A simple problem, really. There were problems with a few of the pleasure sensors. Each person has the opportunity to create their ideal life, and it seems as if some of the wishes were going a bit… awry."  
"Damn right," Russell gasped, "That sure wasn't my idea of an ideal life!"  
The Doctor fixed him with a curious look.  
"Wasn't it?"  
The Doctor resumed his infuriating habit of walking away before getting an answer.  
"Doctor!"  
Russell chased him back up the stairs, but the portly man's deceptive speed beat him yet again. Soon enough they were in the kitchen, where Susan and Colleen has a merry soup bubbling away.  
"Russell!" Colleen exclaimed, breathless with shock, "What happened to you?"  
"Looks like you've been put through the wringer," Susan said with a particularly frustrated look at her grandfather, "what happened?"  
"Oh, there's no time for all of that now," the Doctor trotted over and stirred the soup kettle, "the human race is about to be destroyed."  
As soon as he said it, another alarm began to shriek through Susan's house. Russell leaned up against a wall, holding his aching head.  
"One more alarm…" he moaned. The Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver, pointed it at the ceiling, and the sound stopped.  
"You can't be serious!" Susan shouted.  
"I am very serious," the Doctor continued stirring the soup, "It appears as if someone has filed a denial of service request to your servers."  
"But…but you fixed everything!" his granddaughter wailed, beginning to quaver.  
"I fixed what I could. The rest is up to her."  
He glanced over at Colleen, who shrunk from his gaze with fright.  
"What? Me? You can't mean…"  
"I _do_ mean," the Doctor continued, "Your cybernetic brain is the only thing that can process all of the information necessary to stop this computer virus before all of North America is obliterated. Susan, I suggest you take her downstairs and fix it, yes?"  
Susan's eyes grew wide. She nodded dumbly and, taking Colleen forcefully by the hand, she dragged her downstairs. Russell, his head still pounding, rounded on the Doctor.  
"You bastard," he seethed, drawing himself up to his full height so the Doctor was staring straight at his neck, "What do you think you're doing, sending a poor, helpless girl into something like that? Couldn't you have at least helped her?"  
"I cannot help her," the Doctor said, brandishing the soup spoon like a pace stick, "This is something she needs to do. She needs a purpose, Mr. Garamond, she needs instruction. Think about it. Think about a machine, a computer. It needs input. It needs instructions. It needs a purpose and to be told what to do. Colleen is completely insane, by her standards: she has no purpose, no programming, no great directive. She is completely lost, because she is a _machine_, Mr. Garamond, no matter how hard you try to convince yourself otherwise. She is a _machine._"  
He punctuated the last word by prodding the butt of the spoon into Russell's breastbone. His point being made, he returned to the soup.  
"This is something she must do. She's scared, Mr. Garamond, frightened, terrified out of her mind, can't you see that? Every night she sits up crying, every time she flinches when there's a loud noise, every time she runs into your arms…it's because she is scared, and she is scared because she doesn't know what to do. Someone needs to program her. Someone needs to tell her what to do, or her insecurities and internal paradoxes will destroy what little human tissue is left in her. It's one of the reasons the Cybermen have to be the way they are, emotionless, heartless, driven unswervingly to their instructions…they'd tear themselves apart if they could see what they have become."  
He stopped stirring the soup, then, and sighed.  
"I should have killed her. She can never have a normal life, you know. She'll always have worries, and nightmares, the stuff of which we can not even understad. She was not a creation meant to exist, not meant to survive… but I couldn't take it upon myself to kill her. I haven't the right, not to kill someone… something that was so unique, no matter how flawed… but sometimes I think I should have."  
Russell's head was now cracked in a full migraine. Nothing seemed to make sense, the world was swaying before his eyes, and sounds seem to swim about his head as if he were underwater. He stumbled over to the kitchen table and slumped into a chair.  
"I'll put the kettle on," the Doctor said flatly, "Lots of sugar. You've been through a great deal. It should help."  
By the time the water was ready, Susan and Colleen had returned.  
"I'd never seen anything like it before," Susan marveled as Colleen blushed furiously, "Such compassion, such speed of calculation…she saved them all, and even returned those who had been corrupted. She erased all memory of the event, so as not to scar those living with nightmares or even unpleasant thoughts. She managed to stop a trillion different running processes and exterminate trillions more malicious insurgent programs…it was the stuff of myth, of gods…even the Time Lords would not have shown such dedication, such passion, such… love."  
"But at what price," the Doctor said, setting down four steaming mugs of tea on the table, "I scarcely say that Colleen would rather be back on the heath, eh m'gel?"  
Colleen picked up her mug, wiping a bit of crimson, sweaty hair from her ivory forehead.  
"There are times I do think that, Doctor," she said slowly, resolutely, "But I know now that I can help, and that I should help."  
The Doctor pulled his chair close, until he was face to face with the Irishwoman.  
"Even for all the nightmares? All the worries? All the fears and the doubts and the confusion about your very being, the very creature you have become?"  
"Yes."  
Her answer was immediate. Even the Doctor seemed taken aback by such a strong pronouncement.  
"Well, there you have it," he said, leaning back in his chair and blowing on his mug of tea. He winked as he looked over the rim of the mug at Colleen.  
"Good girl."

"So," the Doctor said, blowing on his tea, "I suppose Susan…er…Cynthia…"  
He said this delicately, and his granddaughter smiled and gave a gentle nod.  
"I suppose she has told you all sorts of interesting things…"  
His voice was still as polite as ever, but it seemed as if something was stirring underneath. Russell knew this tone of voice, and it was never a good thing, but the only problem was that he didn't know what it would bring. Would the Doctor go into another one of his triades? Would he bolt for the TARDIS and leave them stranded in the future? Would he toss the scalding hot tea in his granddaughter's face? Nothing was certain when the Doctor began weighing his words.  
"Yes, Doctor," Colleen answered after a nervous pause, "She told me about her family…"  
"It's probably best, then, that you should forget that."  
The Doctor's voice was flat then, cold and almost without passion. Colleen immediately lowered her face back to the cup. Russell cast nervous looks around the homey little table, wondering what would happen next. Susan, still a bit rebellious even after a few hundred years of life, decided to stir the pot.  
"Grandfather, how can you say that?" she put down her tea with a look of shock, "I just told her the legends, the stories. They have a right to know who you are, don't they?"  
"I like to keep my distant past out of conversation for those of the present," the Doctor's voice was still ghoulishly flat.  
"Like me, then?"  
There was a pause.  
"Yes."  
"And I suppose you just came here to my rescue for part of some greater plan, for the preservation of the Laws of Time, is that right?"  
"Do not misunderstand me," the Doctor finally put down his tea, "I do miss you, Susan, but…"  
"But?!" her voice was becoming strident.  
"Things must be preserved. Time must be kept in order. I'm the only one, now, more or less…"  
"And you just had to take it upon you, didn't you? You just had to play the hero and suffer for all of our sins, right? And here I thought you'd change in half a millenia… you're still just as stubborn and self-serving as you were before! You left me stranded on Earth, millions of years ago, just because something didn't work anymore, right? Just like with the Aztecs, or the Romans, or the cavemen… you do it all for yourself!"  
"Susan, please-"  
"My name is…"  
"Your name is Susan Foreman, and I'll be damned if I call you anything different," the Doctor's voice was still low, but edged with barely concealed rage. He clenched his fist, crushing the cup he held in his hand. Hot tea spilled down the table as the broken cup drew blood on the Doctor's palm. All eyes, stricken with shock, turned to the Doctor when he next spoke.  
"I was foolish then," he said, reaching for a kerchief in his jacket, "Impetuous, vain, contrary simply for the sake of being contrary. I did what I felt, and I had nothing to hold me. I was old enough to live this life, with all its crazy paving, but you, Susan… you needed a life. You needed to live a life like I had once, all of its days one after the other, to know who you are. I would check in on you, from time to time, though you would never know it, and I was proud of you. You made yourself into the best example I could have hoped for."  
"Then why didn't you ever tell me that?" she shouted, her eyes dampening with tears.  
"As I got older…" The Doctor flexed his hand experimentally, and found it still contained a few pieces of the cup. He winced and withdrew it, "I grew wiser, but never less stubborn. Russell and Colleen can tell you that."  
They both nodded dumbly.  
"Did it ever occurred to you, Susan… that I was too embarrassed to come back and see you? Embarrassed for all of the things I did, the way I acted when I was young? They say you can never go back, and it's never more painfully obvious than when you work with time. I wanted to come back, but I couldn't. I didn't want you to be ashamed of me, and I have so many things that I am ashamed of."  
"Oh, grandfather…"  
She got up from the table and got a clean cloth out of the cupboard. She took the bloodied kerchief out of the Doctor's hand and replaced it with the cloth, smiling warmly.  
"You were always stubborn, but you were still a big, soft git."  
Russell couldn't help but laugh, partially to break the tension, and partially because what Susan had said was very, very funny. The Doctor chuckled as well, and so did Susan, eventually.  
"Susan, my darling…" the Doctor said, pushing her away and rising, "it's time you left this place. Choose a successor, a replacement, and we'll go."  
"Go?" Susan blinked, still holding the bloodied cloth, "You mean…back in the TARDIS?"  
"Of course, my dear!" the Doctor snapped up his hat and was his chipper self again, "I can't very well leave you here until the universe's end! What kind of grandfather would I be, then? You've done all you can, here, it's time for you to move on."  
"But…" Susan blinked in absolute disbelief, "you're not taking me with you, are you?"  
The Doctor was halfway out the door back to the dark room where the TARDIS stood. He turned over his shoulder and cocked an eyebrow.  
"Do you want to?"  
"…No," Susan said after an agonizing hesitation, "That life's not for me anymore… but I can't leave here, either, I'm protecting all of these people, and…"  
"I know you, granddaughter," the Doctor smiled, beckoning Russell and Colleen to come. The former drained his tea and did as he was told, "You've got a successor all lined up in case of emergencies."  
"Well, yes, but I.."  
The Doctor let Colleen and Russell go ahead into the TARDIS. When he was sure that they were gone, he turned to her.  
"Susan, dear… I know what awaits you. You don't want to live until the end of the universe. I've seen it. Your heart simply couldn't take it. Come with me, and I'll find you another life, a new one."  
"In the past?"  
"There's not much future left," he said with a sad little smile, "Come, Susan. You are still my flesh and blood, after all, and I know that neither of us want to end this quite yet. There's still plenty both of us can do."  
"You're right," Susan relented with a smile, "But don't let it go to your head. Just give me a few to get things ready."  
"Of course," the Doctor said gently, bidding her go with a wave of his hand. Once she had disappeared from sight, he bolted into the TARDIS at lightning speed. Russell and Colleen were there, caught halfway in a conversation.  
"Glad to be ought of that war zone, I tell you…hey, Doctor!" Russell said with a grin, "How's the family feud?"  
The Doctor completely ignored him, and immediately set about trying to clean up the TARDIS interior: dusting off the console with his hat, picking up a few random bits of paper or the odd sweater slung over a chair. Without stopping, he spoke.  
"Initiate plan fourteen-alpha, block-five."  
Colleen snapped to attention and rigidly answered.  
"Understood."  
As soon as the words left her lips, she reverted to her softer, meek self, looking rather bewildered. Russell's good mood vanished instantly.  
"Doctor," he began with predatory hesitation, "what did you do to her?"  
"I enacted a programming in her brain that will prevent her from telling anyone what Susan told her," he said curtly, tossing the sweater onto the coat rack, "the last two hours are a complete mystery to her."  
Russell helped Colleen into a seat.  
"Why would you do a thing like that?"  
He had a feeling he knew the answer already. The Doctor kept tidying up, speaking civilly, but without warmth.  
"Like I said, my past is just that… the past."  
Russell turned red and began to sputter, but he could make no words form. The Doctor kept moving, eventually shooing the still flabbergasted Russell and the groggy Colleen out of the control room with a speed and strength that belied his appearance. He had securely shut them inside the bowels of the TARDIS (whereupon Russell immediately began pounding on the door to be let in) when Susan entered.  
"Oh!" she marveled, whirling around the humming, white room, "it's just as I remember!"  
"We've had a few re-fittings," the Doctor said with a grin, adjusting some knobs on the console, "and a rather nasty bout with the Master that left it looking a little…green… but it seems as if the old girl's fully healthy again."  
Susan stopped momentarily.  
"The Master? Really? Is he still around?"  
The Doctor took a beat before he answered, avoiding her gaze.  
"More or less."  
"Grandfather…" Susan began to follow him around the console until finally trapping him, "What do you mean by that?"  
"It means that he occasionally knows the benefit of a safety razor."  
The Doctor tried to put on an angry, even dangerous face, but he couldn't manage it in the face of his own flesh and blood. His face fell into a devastated frown as he heaved a heavy sigh.  
"Susan…" he flipped one more switch and the ship was on its way, "I have something to tell you."  
When the Doctor finally unlocked the door to the TARDIS interior, Russell spilled out into the control room and in a fine mood.  
"I've often wondered, Mr. Garamond," the Doctor said. picking up the drinking glass Russell had put to the door, "Does it actually work?  
Russell grunted and got to his feet, stomping to the other side of the room.  
"You know, I don't know why I still get so angry at you," he fumed, "All this smoke and mirrors, I should come to expect it."  
"Indeed you should," the Doctor muttered, puttering around the console, alone, "Can't a grandfather have a few moments alone with his kin?"  
"Not when she was the only one who could have told us…" he looked to a sad and wilted Colleen, "told me just exactly who you are!"  
"Who I am is who you see in front of me," the Doctor said with a smug grin, "I am constantly being re-invented with every passing nanosecond, just as your skin is constantly replaced until the day you die. We are never the same person we were the day before."  
"Bah!" Russell said, slumping into a chair, "I can't talk to you when you're like this."  
Colleen sat next to him and patted his arm reassuringly, but one this still bothered her.  
"Doctor…"  
"Yes, my dear?"  
"May I ask…" she summoned up her courage, "May I ask where Susan went?"  
The Doctor regarded her curiously, with a curious half-smile.  
"London, England, Nineteen hundred and sixty-three," the Doctor sighed with a bit of exhuberance, "She wanted to go back."  
He began setting a new course for the TARDIS, talking as he went.  
"She's got a good, new life now. Well, what little she lets me see. She always was quite a psychic prodigy. She's got a little shop, new husband, even a few children. She's teaching now, adults mostly. Who knows, she may begin another line of partial-Gallifreyans, though I'd have to take a look at them. Gallifreyans and humans… they usually don't mix. Time will tell, I suppose… it always does."  
"Would it be impossible to go to there?"  
That actually stopped the Doctor in his tracks.  
"To her home, Colleen?" Russell asked. She nodded. The Doctor walked the full diameter of the control room and crouched down until he was eye to eye with the Irish maid.  
"Why would you want to, Colleen?" he cocked his head a little, like a bird.  
"There's something…" she began to fiddle with the hem of her apron, "just a little something I'd like to give her."  
The Doctor gave it a moment's consideration, and smiled, standing up.  
"As you wish."  
With a few clicks and switches, the course was changed.  
"I suppose I can postpone a wedding banquet on the Silver Seas of Kraan for a little while," the Doctor mused, patting at his belly, "I could stand a drop a little weight."  
The TARDIS touched down on a rather rainy spring morning. The Doctor emerged in a muted tartan overcoat, carrying a similarly patterned umbrella that was big enough for several people. Colleen followed him, and Russell followed her, although he claimed it was out of mere "morbid curiousity." After hanging an "out of service" sign on the TARDIS door, all three headed up a stone walkway to a charming, if overly cozy, house in a modest part of the city.  
"Out of service?" Russell asked as their footsteps splashed in puddles on pavingstones.  
"The TARDIS was originally disguised as a 1950s police callbox. My phone hasn't worked in years, unfortunately."  
Russell had wondered why the spaceship always looked so out of the ordinary.  
"And you never thought to change the disguise?"  
"Haven't wanted to in centuries, m'boy," he pulled the porkpie down a little tighter as a gust of wind came up, "Brings back happy memories."  
They followed Colleen as trotted up to the post box that was outside the house, reading the directory to see which one.  
"Quite a fine gardener, My Susan," the Doctor mused, looking over the flowerboxes that lined the walkway. Colleen called to the Doctor, who scrutinised the structure. With a click of his fingers, he snatched a pin from Colleen's hair, unfurling it and picking the lock.  
"Who needs the sonic screwdriver, eh?" Russell grinned. The Doctor stuck out his tongue in a final bit of exertion as the box swung open. He let out a breath and scratched at the shaggying hair under his hat.  
"My, my, my! I haven't done that in a while. Remind me to build another screwdriver sometime soon."  
Colleen reached into her airy blouse and pulled out a small iron Celtic cross.  
"Colleen," the Doctor marveled, "what have you got there?"  
Russell sniffed in derision. Leave it to the Doctor to know how to work the cybernetic brain, but never notice something Colleen always carried with her.  
"This was given to me by my mother," she said, gazing at it, watching it spin on a bit of leather lacing. Her face creased with care and worry as she remembered her long dead country, "She said that it would help me answer all of the difficult questions I had."  
She placed the cross in the post box and shut it. After heaving a sigh, she turned to Russell and the Doctor, uncharacteristically cheerful.  
"I think she'll need it now, more than I do."  
Russell smiled because she was smiling. The Doctor gave that pensive smile he always gave when Russell knew that queer brain of his was ticking away, trying to figure things out.  
"Colleen," the Doctor's voice was low under the loud spattering of raindrops on the brolly, "When you fixed the system, saved all of those electronic lives… did you restore them as they were?"  
"Yes, Doctor."  
"There wasn't a single part in your head that told you to create things perfectly? A utopia? You could have, you know."  
"I know…" Colleen blushed a little, "But it didn't seem right…"  
"And why didn't it seem right?" the Doctor cocked an eyebrow.  
"Well, you should respect the original programmer's code…" she said hesitantly, which allowed the Doctor to leap in with another conjecture.  
"But you saw room for improvement, yes? Your mind told you that?"  
"Doctor," Russell groaned, "leave her alone…"  
"It's all right, Russell," Colleen said with a smile, "Always looking out for me, you are."  
She tweaked the end of his nose, which caused him to blush furiously.  
"In a way, Doctor, there was room for improvement…" she began, "but something told me to let it be."  
"Admirable, Ms. Ciradh," the Doctor smirked, "You're a better god than I."  
They began walking back to the TARDIS, and Russell was greatly pleased. Let the Doctor say what he wanted, let him make all the speeches in the world. Colleen wasn't just some machine, she was a human being with a human heart. A cybernetic augmentation may have filled her insides with steel, but her soul remained. The three walked back into the TARDIS and out of the rain, and the light on top of the police box blinked once, twice, three times before the ship disappeared, off again for wherever time would send it.


End file.
